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If you’re a deer hunter in northern Minnesota, boreal forest buck antlered deer hunter, your DNA says horns, polished, tall tined, and it’s the latter part of summer and you see a velvet headed rack. Walleyes, what walleyes, brook trout what brook trout, ducks, what ducks, shame on me I love ducks, but what a buck, firewood, what firewood, that was a monster buck, oh my goodness what a buck.
Then I miss a rifle, it was my absolute favorite rifle, model 94, 30-30, carried it for years, got some nice bucks with it, then this kid showed up and looked at my rifle like the first time I looked at that rifle. He had those glazed over eyes that I had the first time I saw it, and the guy that gave it to me said, you like that rifle son, I said yes sir, that’s in all the western movies on TV, it’s in scabbards on horses, they shoot bears and deer and everything with it, then he gave it to me, and seeing the kid look at me, like I must have looked to the old gent, I gave it to the kid. Dang, I miss that rifle.
I told a military pal of mine the story, and last year he gave me a brand new 30-30, model 94, in the brand new cardboard box. It’s not my rifle from memory, and last fall I filled my buck tag with it. Who knows what this fall holds, but oh what a set of horns this buck had, it had loads of fuzzy points, and I wonder, will I get that buck and is there another youngster that’s gonna go googly eye over this new rifle, well, I sure hope so.
--The trout whisperer
